Happy Birthday, Mr Darcy

by Victoria Connelly

  Happy Birthday, Mr Darcy

  Victoria Connelly

  Copyright 2013 Victoria Connelly

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Victoria Connelly asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  Cover image by Roy Connelly

  Published by Cuthland Press

  in association with Notting Hill Press

  To my lovely friend and fellow writer, Jane Odiwe, with love.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Acknowledgements

  Three Graces sample

  About the Author

  Other Books by Victoria Connelly

  ‘Anything is to be preferred or endured rather than marrying without affection.’

  Jane Austen in a letter to Fanny Knight, 1814

  Chapter 1

  Katherine Roberts was quite determined to keep calm. It was just a wedding. There was nothing to worry about. The fact that it was her own wedding and that it had never been in her grand plan to get married was quite beside the point. She would remain calm and gracious at all times like Anne Elliot or Elinor Dashwood – two of the most controlled of Jane Austen’s heroines.

  Still, as she sat in her tiny book-lined office at St Bridget’s College in the heart of Oxford, the early evening light gilding her long dark hair and turning the papers on her desk golden, she found it hard to believe that, in a week’s time, she would be married.

  Katherine smiled to herself as she twisted the engagement ring on her finger. Warwick had chosen a stunning Georgian ring from the late eighteenth-century set with a single rose-cut diamond. The stone was oval in shape and how it sparkled! Katherine held it up to the light now to admire its beauty. It wasn’t garish like some modern diamond but rather infused with the magic that age brings and seemed almost silvery in complexion which Katherine knew was due to the foil backing of the stones which was typical of jewellery of the time.

  It thrilled her to know that her ring had been around in Jane Austen’s time. Indeed, it was possible that her idol had seen it. Perhaps she’d been walking by a jeweller’s with her sister, Cassandra, when she’d spied the ring and stopped to admire it. Katherine liked to imagine that – a direct, physical link with her favourite author.

  Still, she couldn’t help thinking that it was much too good a ring for her to wear every day. She’d never worn anything more ornate than a Russian wedding ring before Warwick had proposed to her and, for the first few weeks, she’d been very self-conscious about wearing it to her lectures and tutorials but had been secretly delighted with the attention it had got from her female students who had fawned over it with gasps of wonder and romantic sighs.

  For a moment, she thought back to Christmas at Purley Hall and the last Jane Austen conference she’d attended with Warwick. It had snowed and snowed until there’d been no hope of any of the guests leaving until well after the festivities were over unless it was by police escort like the dastardly Jackson Moore or by helicopter like dear Doris Norris. Katherine had spoken to her friend just the week before and was glad to hear that she was fit and well and learning to take things easier.

  ‘I’ve had to spend a lot of time on my sofa,’ Doris had told Katherine, ‘and what else is there to do but reread my favourite books and watch all my favourite adaptations again? I fear the BBC video of Pride and Prejudice is on its last legs! The lake scene is looking very wobbly these days.’

  ‘You’ll have to buy it on DVD,’ Katherine told her. ‘It will last longer.’

  ‘On PVC?’

  ‘No, DVD.’

  ‘But I’ve only just got the hang of video. Oh, dear. I guess I’ll never be able to keep up with things. I wonder what Jane Austen would have made of it all. I mean, fancy being able to watch Mr Darcy on TV and make him fast forward and rewind at the touch of a button. It’s quite extraordinary, isn’t it?’

  Katherine laughed. ‘When it comes to Mr Darcy, I rather prefer the pause button myself!’ They giggled like a couple of school girls.

  Ah, yes, that was something which had been worrying Katherine. Would she be able to fully indulge in her evenings sitting on the sofa, wearing her baggy Fairisle cardigan and eating peppermint creams whilst watching Jane Austen adaptations? As long as she could remember, this had been a very private and uninterrupted pleasure of hers but what would happen when she was sharing a home with Warwick? How would he feel if she needed to escape into the early nineteenth-century for a couple of hours? They’d watched a few films together of course but it was different when you were dating because you were always impeccably behaved, weren’t you? But what would happen after you’d been living together as husband and wife for a few weeks, a few months. A few years?

  ‘You’re not watching that film again, are you, Katherine? Honestly, I know you lecture in Austen but do you really need to keep watching the same Colin Firth and Alan Rickman scenes over and over again?’

  Katherine tried to blink the scene away. They wouldn’t be like that, would they? They were both Janeites; they had an understanding about such things and Warwick was partial to the young Kate Winslet in Sense and Sensibility and he’d also expressed a naughty fondness for Hayley Atwell’s Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park so they were bound to tolerate each other’s little obsession, weren't they?

  Sometimes, Katherine had to pinch herself at the speed at which things were happening. It didn't seem that long ago since she had been writing letters to her favourite author - Lorna Warwick. She remembered with great fondness sitting at the little table by the window in her cottage. It was a table not dissimilar to the one at the Jane Austen House Museum where the author used to write her novels. Katherine would make a cup of Earl Grey tea in a blue and white china mug, take her favourite fountain pen from her study desk and give herself the luxury of time to handwrite her letters to the historical novelist. Only the historical novelist had turned out to be a man - a man with whom she had fallen deeply in love.

  Who would have thought it? The academic and the romantic novelist? Her work colleagues at St Bridget's College had split into two camps: those who thought that the match was absolutely delicious and those who were simply appalled and showed their disdain by keeping their distance which suited Katherine fine because, like Elizabeth Bennet, she could not abide a snob.

  Besides, Jane Austen’s novels were full of odd couples. Who would have paired the outspoken Elizabeth with the dour Mr Darcy? Well, readers would have, obviously, for opposites always attract in fiction but imagine their modern counterparts in real life. And think of the young, Emma and her Mr Knightley, and wilful Marianne and steadfast Colonel Brandon. The novels were littered with couples one would never have thought to pair. So why not Katherine and Warwick? If there was one thing that the novels of Jane Austen taught us it was that love was idiosyncratic, unpredictable as well as rather wonderful.

  To be absolutely fair, Katherine really didn’t care what people thought about her and Warwick even though there’d been a bit of press about their engagement.

  ‘Lorna and Katherine – Happy Ever After?’ Ran the saucy headline in the tabloid Vive!. They’d somehow managed to find out that she
and Warwick had been pen pals before they’d met and accused Warwick of ‘cruel duplicity’ but other publications were kinder with headlines such as ‘Romantic Novelist Writes His Own Happy Ending’ and ‘Jane Austen Love Match’ which was Katherine’s personal favourite.

  Warwick had told her that she would have to get used to a bit of press intrusion.

  ‘I’m not J K Rowling,’ he told her, ‘but they do occasionally poke their noses into things and want an interview.’

  That didn’t worry Katherine but there were other things worrying her about their marriage. Up until now, her books and her teaching had been everything to her but marrying Warwick was bound to change that. The day to day business of living with somebody was going to shift her focus away from herself and her work and she wasn’t sure how that was going to affect her. And Warwick too. She’d never been around him when he was fully immersed in his writing. What if he turned into some kind of beast – slamming his study door shut and locking her out of his life? Would she be able to cope with the working Warwick?

  So far, they had only grabbed weekends and brief holidays together and they’d both been on their best behaviour around each other – putting their work on the backburner and giving each other their undivided attention. Well, except when inspiration struck and Warwick had to scribble some note down about his latest hero or heroine. But that couldn’t last, could it? You couldn’t carry that momentum forward into everyday married life and that thought terrified Katherine for she’d never lived with a man before. Her time had always been her own.

  Then there was the practical side of things like where would all their books go? Would they have separate bookcases for their individual collections or were married couples expected to join their libraries together? What if it all became one big literary jumble and she could never find her beloved volumes again? It was very important to Katherine that she could put her hand on a particular volume at any time especially when she was writing her own books and needed to reference a specific title. Would that sense of order be lost once she was married?

  They’d once had a conversation about their vast book collections.

  ‘How many do you think you have?’ Warwick had asked her.

  Katherine had pursed her lips together and her head did a succession of little nods as if she was counting them in her mind’s eye.

  ‘About four thousand, I think.’

  ‘Right,’ Warwick said, completely unfazed.

  ‘And you?’

  Warwick’s dark eyes had widened. ‘Well, I’ve never actually counted them but if you’ve got four thousand-’

  ‘Approximately.’

  ‘Approximately,’ he said, ‘I must have at least ten thousand. If not more.’

  Katherine gasped.

  ‘An editor friend of mine recently moved house and he had to use the same firm of removal men who did the British Library,’ Warwick said.

  Thinking about all those books made Katherine’s head spin. It would be wonderful to be surrounded by fabulous volumes, of course, and to share Warwick’s library but she feared the sheer number of books at the same time. There was only one solution. They would have to find the right house that was big enough to house their mammoth library without making it feel as if the book-lined walls were closing in on them.

  She bit her lip nervously at the thought of a new home and then thought of her much-loved little Oxfordshire cottage and of the comfortably snug rooms, the woodburning stove and the modest pieces of antique furniture she’d collected over the years. It was a home she’d been so happy in but it was time to say goodbye to it now and move forward to a new home with Warwick.

  Warwick was going to sell his beloved house. When he’d first suggested it, Katherine had been heartbroken and had tried to persuade him to change his mind. She couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing The Old Vicarage again with its beautiful sash windows and lofty ceilings but Warwick seemed adamant.

  ‘I love The Old Vicarage, of course I do,’ he’d told her, ‘and I’ll miss it like crazy but it’s part of my past and it’s time now to move forward and find a home together. Who knows – there might well be its double in some corner of Oxfordshire.’

  Katherine felt lucky that Warwick was willing to make the move to her part of England because she couldn’t imagine a life away from Oxford.

  ‘I can write anywhere,’ he told her and so they’d registered with several Oxfordshire estate agents and had viewed two properties together already.

  It was fun to imagine the kind of property they’d end up with. They’d decided that it had to be bigger than Katherine’s but smaller than Warwick’s. Georgian or Regency would be perfect with the generously proportioned rooms of the period and the large sash windows that they both adored but Katherine also leaned to earlier properties with their cosy little rooms and beams.

  ‘Too dark,’ Warwick had said when she’d told him. ‘And don’t say I can write by candlelight. I want nice big windows in my study.’

  Katherine took a deep breath. She was going to live with Warwick Lawton – really live with him - not just for the space of a weekend or a holiday but forever.

  Gazing down at the silvery brightness of her engagement ring, she realised that her life was about to change out of all recognition and that thought terrified her. What if she was making a huge mistake?

  Chapter 2

  ‘What a pity Cassandra isn’t old enough to be a bridesmaid,’ Robyn Love Harcourt said wistfully as she tidied away the bridal magazines which her boss, Dame Pamela Harcourt had ordered. There were quite a few of them and each one had been plundered for ideas in preparation for the upcoming wedding. Robyn, who was a true romantic, had spent hours flipping through the pages and she couldn’t stop imagining her daughter in a fondant-pink dress, throwing rose petals down the aisle.

  ‘She’ll be old enough one day,’ Dame Pamela said. ‘Maybe I’ll get married again and she can be my bridesmaid.’

  Robyn blinked in surprise, unsure if Dame Pamela was joking or not. She looked at her boss for a moment as she pulled out a ten by eight glossy black and white photograph of herself in the role of Ophelia in Hamlet before signing it with a flourish.

  ‘There, send that out to Mr Piper,’ she said.

  Mr Piper was one of Dame Pamela’s biggest fans and regularly wrote her passionate letters that ran to ten or more pages. He sent her flowers on her birthday, chocolates for Valentine’s Day and outrageously lavish gifts from his home furnishings company for Christmas. He was, Robyn thought, Dame Pamela’s number one fan but she did often wonder what he did with all the photographs she kept posting to him. He could probably paper his whole house with them by now.

  ‘Would you really consider getting married again?’ Robyn asked.

  Dame Pamela looked up from her desk. She was wearing a powder blue dress with a silk scarf tied around her neck and an enormous pair of aquamarine earrings. Her silver-white hair was swept up in its famous chignon and a large diamond clip sparkled in its depths.

  ‘My dear Robyn, I have had more husbands than I care to count and, although I adore men, I’d prefer not to live with one again. Apart from Higgins, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ Robyn said with a smile, thinking of the faithful butler who had been a part of Dame Pamela’s life for at least twenty years.

  ‘Anyway, you are going to look absolutely resplendent in your outfit,’ Dame Pamela told her.

  Robyn smiled, thinking of the Regency dress which had been specially made for her in her role as maid of honour. It was an Empire-line dress in sky-blue – one of Katherine’s favourite colours – and was hand-embroidered with white roses which both Robyn and Katherine were going to carry in their bouquets. Finished with a simple white ribbon around the waist, the dress really was the last word in sophistication and Dame Pamela had also insisted on a matching Spencer jacket being made in case the English summer proved inclement. Robyn adored her outfit and couldn’t wait to wear it. She knew it would be treasured f
or years to come and worn again and again at Purley Hall’s Jane Austen conferences when the time came to dress up.

  Robyn stared out of the window of Dame Pamela’s office, her gaze going far beyond the cedar tree towards the fields. Dan was out riding that way on Perseus. He’d taken Biscuit the Jack Russell with him but dear old Moby the Golden Labrador was sitting at home in his wicker basket after a more sedate walk in the grounds earlier that morning. He was slowing down and knew his limitations but he still enjoyed a poke around in the hedgerows and Robyn’s pace with the baby stroller suited him just fine.

  For a moment, Robyn thought of her tall, handsome husband. He was Warwick’s best man and was going to wear the most perfect Regency gentleman’s outfit with a sky-blue cravat to match her gown. She had only seen him in it once at the last fitting and had almost had to ask for some smelling salts for fear of swooning completely. He looked like he’d just stepped out of the pages of a nineteenth-century novel.

  ‘Robyn?’

  Robyn blinked and looked at Dame Pamela. Had she said something?

  ‘You were miles away,’ Dame Pamela said.

  ‘Just thinking about the wedding,’ Robyn said, feeling herself blush.

  ‘Thinking of our Danny in his Regency finery, were you?’

  Robyn couldn’t hide her smile. ‘It’s very hard not to,’ she said.

  Dame Pamela nodded. ‘Why don’t men dress like that anymore?’ she said, her heavily-powdered forehead wrinkling in consternation. ‘I mean, you can’t beat a nice cravat, can you?’

  ‘Or a waistcoat,’ Robyn added.

  ‘But men insist on wearing those awful sweatshirt things with the hoods or a baggy T-shirt that does nothing for the male form.’

  ‘Higgins does his best,’ Robyn said.

  Dame Pamela nodded. ‘Higgins has done his utmost to resurrect the waistcoat but he’s no Colin Firth, alas.’

  Robyn giggled.

  ‘Let’s just hope we can persuade a few of the male guests to don a costume.’